Sundries & Curiosities for the Adventurous. A Tribal Inquiry.

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the diamond-like brilliance of awakening

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

….Jack London

have you ever caught yourself looking in from the outside of yourself? a little glimpse of truth, our inherent nature…..that deep sense of belonging to something that holds us….a hug from the infinite bones of spirit……

Most of us are thrust to one side of a paradox or the other by events, or the acuteness of our suffering, or by the incapacities of our own character which cannot quite accept the abundance of mystery we are subject to by merely waking. But the one-sidedness of our experience never mitigates the beauty or power of the multi-faceted Whole, and though we seek to experience Unity and to inhabit Wholeness, being human, it is a momentary affair at best, like balancing sticks on a fence, or words of truth on a tongue, or pains on a precarious sense of faith. Yet, despite our limitations, there is in everything, as Aldous Huxley suggests, “A Divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds, an immanent and transcendent Ground of All Being- immemorial and universal.” Every culture understands this, and, though modern science has done much to discredit the nation, there is a common, numinous quality in everything. The Algonquin Indians call it Manitou. The Iroquois call it Orenda, and the Eskimo call that essence of Divine Reality Innua. Perhaps Truth is the common, irreducible presence found in all things, that mixture of light and stillness that we repeatedly find wherever we go- in the worn edges of stones, in the fallen bark of trees, in the winded eyes of strangers, in the mew of an elderly mind about to give up its Truth……Mark Nepo